The Food Site

I know, I know…another chocolate dessert recipe but it is the mooncake festival anyway. And I don’t know why but I wanted to try my hands at baking my own mooncakes again. Last year’s chocolate mooncakes were a disaster when I brushed on too much egg glaze and the mooncakes looked horrible although it tasted absolutely heavenly.

So, this year, I baked the regular plain mooncakes and a batch of chocolate mooncakes too. You can find the recipes in my recipes page. Again, this year, I bought the ready-made fillings of lotus paste, chocolate paste and red bean paste. No point wasting hours cooking the fillings when there are really good ones that we can buy. Besides, they even have sugar free lotus-paste  fillings which I could give to my diabetic grandma.

Anyway, this year, I went easy on the egg glaze and got really chocolatey and nice looking mooncakes.

See? A real improvement compared to last year’s horrid looking ones.

Baked mooncakes are a real time-consuming process as you have to allow for ‘resting’ time of about 10 hours for the raw ingredients before we can wrap the fillings and bake it.The first process is to mix together baking soda, golden syrup, alkaline water and oil in a mixing bowl and then let it rest for about 5 hours.

Then, I sift the flour and cocoa powder together and leave aside until the first ingredients are ready. After five hours, I add some chocolate essence and then fold in the flour into the brown liquid mixture to form a smooth, sticky dough.

Again, I have to let the dough rest for another 6 hours or so. Only after that that I divide the dough into small portions, flatten it and wrap it around the fillings into a ball. Then I push the ball into the plastic moulds I bought last year.

Then I pop those mooncakes into the oven for about 10 minutes. Remove and let it cool for 5 minutes and then brush on the egg glaze and then bake another 3 minutes.Then I get these:

Some of the sizes vary a bit because by the time I waiting 11 hours for the dough to be ready, it was already midnight and let me tell you, moulding mooncakes in the middle of the night is not exactly very accurate when it comes to the size.

Here’s the recipe:

Baked Chocolate Mooncakes Recipe

Ingredients A

400g golden syrup

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tbsp alkaline water

100g corn oil

Ingredients B

450g plain flour, sifted

100g cocoa powder, sifted

Other ingredients

1 tsp chocolate essence

1.5 kg of ready-made lotus paste/ chocolate paste/ red bean paste

Instructions

1. Mix ingredients A in a mixing bowl and let it rest about 5 hours.

2. Sift ingredients B together.

3. After 5 hours, add the chocolate essence to the ingredients A and stir will combined. Then fold in ingredients B. Mix it together until you get a smooth sticky dough. Set aside for another 6 hours.

4. Divide the dough into small balls, about the size of a ping pong ball or smaller depending on the size of your moulds, and then flatten it on a floured surface using a rolling pin. Scoop a generous dollop of fillings onto it and wrap the skin around it.

5. Push the wrapped dough into the floured mould and then gently push it out using the lever (if you are using a wooden mould, then gently knock it out).

6. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Place the moulded mooncakes on a floured baking pan and bake between 8 to 10 minutes.

7. Remove from oven and let it cool for about 5 minutes. Then, lightly brush it with some egg glaze to give it some glossy shine. Bake for another 3 – 5 minutes.

8. Once done, remove from oven and let it cool before removing from the baking pan.

Egg Glaze Recipe

Ingredients

1 egg yolk

1/2 tbsp water

a pinch of salt

Instructions

Mix it all together in a bowl and use a pastry brush to lightly brush it on the mooncakes.

Other Mooncake Baking Tips You Should Know:

1. Never over-bake your mooncakes or else it will go out of shape (as I also experienced that last year). So, if your oven is of a higher wattage, bake it for less than 10 minutes, maybe at 8 minutes and after putting the egg glaze, you bake it for another 2 to 3 minutes.

2. Never keep the mooncakes in an airtight container immediately after it has cooled down. It is always best to leave it out in the open, preferably overnight for the skin to soften. You don’t want dry, hard mooncake skin!

3. The golden syrup is important because it is what keeps the mooncake from becoming mouldy (as in fungi growth) too fast.

4. Even with the golden syrup, these are homemade mooncakes so they don’t last as long as commercial mooncakes which may contain added preservatives sp it is best to keep them in a dry cool place and don’t keep for too long.

Now that I got your attention…

Another of my favourite dessert definitely has to be brownies. If you search this site, you will probably find that I have two other brownie recipes, a non-bake brownie and the best-ever brownie recipes. Now, what can compete with the best-ever chocolate brownie recipe I had?

Well, if you love peanut butter, you will think this recipe is way better than just chocolate and almonds in the brownies. I mean what is a better combination than peanut butter and chocolate eh? Don’t believe me? Then try it out for yourself.

The beige patch is the peanut butter and of course, one can never enjoy brownies fully without the required ice cream!

Since I put some chocolate ganache topping on it, it is just as good without the ice cream too.

This is a very simple and easy peanut butter chocolate brownie recipe so it can be made in a very short time, about 30 minutes preparation time and then you bake it for about 25 mins and it’s done! Oh, by the way, this is a rather cakey sort of brownie, not the chewy type.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Brownies

You will only need eggs, sugar, flour, chocolate, butter and peanut butter and you’re all set!

I used three types of sugar: brown sugar, molasses and icing sugar. The icing sugar is to give the brownies a more fudgy texture while the brown sugar and molasses are simply because I like their flavours. You will need to beat the sugar and the eggs together first but not too fluffy. About 1 minute using the handheld mixer.

The brownie batter should be gooey and thick, not too watery. Oh and yes, remember to grease the pan and place a piece of foil if you want it to be easier to remove the brownie from the pan.

And once the brownie is done…pour some nice, delicious chocolate ganache topping. Yummm…

So, here’s the recipe and simple instructions to make these ultra delicious brownies…

Easy Peanut Butter Chocolate Brownies Recipe

Ingredients

120g unsweetened chocolate (or any baking chocolate you want to use), broken into pieces

170g butter

3 eggs

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup molasses

1/2 cup icing sugar

(or you could simply use 2 cups white sugar instead of so many types of sugar)

2 tsp vanilla essence

1 cup flour

1/2 cup chopped almonds

2 tbsp peanut butter

Chocolate Ganache

50g cooking chocolate

1 tbsp cocoa powder

3 tbsp butter

Instructions

1. Grease the pan and line it with foil. Preheat the oven to 180°C.

2. Melt the butter and chocolate by putting it in the microwave for about 2 minutes. Leave to cool.

3. Beat the eggs together with the sugar in a mixing bowl but don’t overdo it.

4. Add the eggs mixture to the melted chocolate (make sure the chocolate mixture is not hot or it may cook the eggs!) and then add in the flour, vanilla, almonds and peanut butter.

5. Stir and combine well. Pour into the prepared pan.

6. Bake for about 25 minutes.

For the Chocolate Ganache

It’s best to prepare this after the brownies are done.

1. Melt the chocolate and butter together.

2. Add the cocoa powder.

3. Pour it onto the baked brownies before it hardens.

You can then refrigerate the brownies in an air-tight container and serve it cold with ice cream later. Or you can also heat it up and serve with ice cream for a nice cold and hot combination of chocolate brownies and vanilla ice cream. If you are a real chocoholic like me, dribble some chocolate sauce on top and ahhh….it’s what I’d call heavenly!